Good Knights

It's now that the farmers have started digging up the termite mounds to get at the grain in them that things look especially bleak.

Carol and Giles Knight, missionaries, are just back. "It's a tremendous place," says Carol. "The people are so welcoming, they look out for one another, it's all one extended family."

She's from Copley, near Barnard Castle, met Giles at a Baptist church in London. Their three boys, now temporarily at school back in Barney, have been raised in Niger and taught by their mum.

Evangelical Christians, they are sponsored by an ecumenical charity called Serving in Mission. Giles, from London, is trying to spread the word about cricket as well.

Though the wickets are "less than ideal" - green grass is gold dust in Niger - some of the local boys have learned to say "Owzat" and, affirmatively, "Out".

The umpire's signal for being out is not considered polite in those parts, however, as possibly it may no longer be here.

They met in 1987, married the following year. Giles became a church pastor in Niger's capital in 1991. "I'd had a month's experience there and really felt God wanted me to go back," he says. "It was a place where you could be useful."

Though the figure is rising, only 0.2 per cent of the population is Christian, 90 per cent Moslem. They co-exist peacefully. "Most Moslems are very keen to talk about "They ask how people cannot. Who makes the rain, who brings the morning, who makes people better.

"Jesus to them is a prophet of Islam. They are very keen to find out more about him."

Giles now runs a youth centre in Zinder, Niger's second city, but is involved in almost every aspect of life. A jack of all trades, he says, and concedes the other bit, too. "I'm trained to teach and preach the bible. The rest are my jobs on the side."

Carol's other responsibilities include giving medical advice to woman and children. The nearest proper hospital is six hours drive away, the nearest place a computer can be fixed ("the little things we take for granted") in the capital, a further six hours beyond that.

"You have to minister to the whole person," she says. "The gospel is a very important part of our work but you can't feed a man with the bible when he's hungry."

Were there times when she thought "My God, what am I doing here?"

"Oh yes, frequently. When it's 46 degrees outside and you're gasping for air or when someone is very, very sick and there's so little you can do for them."

The thing she misses most, she says, is being able to inhale a lung full of fresh air every morning ("everything is Niger is so dry and dusty") plus fish and chips, sausages and a proper bacon sandwich.

The thing he misses most is cricket.

Now they're on "home assignment" until September, when the whole family returns to west Africa. Carol and Giles are anxious to find more help and resources for Niger and keen to give talks about their work. They're on (01833) 638654.

DRESSERS, that other Darlington institution, closes on Saturday. Everything must go, they say, but most of it has gone already.

Half the shop is cordoned off, shelves elsewhere more scantily stacked by the minute. Even the mechanical Santa has gone, a premature present at £399.

People pick over the remainders like her in A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens, publishers vary - scavenging on Scrooge's deathbed.

Some books, long gone, were just 10p. For half price it is possible still to buy an A-Z of Motherwell, Kathy Staff's Book of Happy Families or something called Attack of the Genetically Engineered Tomatoes. Paddy Ashdown remains in liberality. There's also a copy of a "semi-autobiographical novel" by our own Peter Mullen - nattily entitled Growing Up With Sex and Death - and for 50p, a wise after the events guide to the Sydney Olympics. More than anything, however, there seem to be books on how to larn yersel' Portuguese. The publishing epic "501 Portuguese Verbs, Fully Conjugated In All Tenses" was £8 99, has 530 pages and may now be had for £4 50.

Some of us have the greatest difficulty simply remembering how to spell Portuguese, much less conjugating 501 of its finest verbs in all their uptight tenses.

There are some books, it might be supposed, that they couldn't even give away. By Saturday, who knows, they might. It is all quite melancholy, a sad business in the end.

A final purchase and a last word from Dressers - The Wrong Kind of Shirts, a book of football quotations reduced to £1 99. Probably it's worth for the line on page 59 from Newcastle United legend Peter Beardsley: "I don't have any pre-match superstitions or habits, but I always have my packet of chocolate buttons."

A fair bit of water has ebbed and flowed over Coatham Rocks since the column sought information on the time that Redcar lifeboat went overland to a rescue.

Though there was no response here, several contacted Stan Coates in Guisborough, who'd sent up the historical maroons in the first place. Stan now offers a date, February 28, 1937, and eye witness accounts from Ron Durrans and Carol Chapman, both in Marske. What no one remembered, however, was that on that gale-lashed Sunday - "five ships in distress off the North-East coast" said The Echo's banner headline - the Redcar lifeboat was twice launched overland, and in completely different directions. After the first call, the craft was dragged four miles by tractor through Coatham to put to sea at Warrenby; on the second - shortly after the crew had returned and was sitting down to Sunday dinner - it headed off up the coast road to Marske, the crew seated aboard.

The tractor being unable to access Marske beach, a farmer loaned a team of horses - and after all that, the lifeboat wasn't needed. The Hartlepool boat, meanwhile, had been launched - "tossed like a cork over the bar" said The Echo - to help the Spanish steamer Miguel, off Saltburn, after an SoS on the BBC Home Service. "Will any person hearing this message in the neighbourhood of Saltburn please notify the coastguard lifesaving authorities."

Calm after the storm, no casualties, our front page also reported that the Australians had amassed 604 (Bradman 169) against England and that The Cinema in Stockton High Street had been destroyed in a £30,000 blaze. A canny news weekend, as they say.

MUCH interest in last week's piece on the forthcoming reunion of Crook Young People's Fellowship, 1945-56. Among those photographed was Wilf Park, later chairman of Crook Town FC, who died in 1974. John Milburn, arch Liverpool fan, recalls his Uncle Wilf taking him on red carpet trips to Spurs against Liverpool because Wilf had befriended legendary Tottenham manager Bill Nicholson when he was at Brancepeth Camp during the war.

On the immortal day of the 1966 World Cup final, whilst the rest of the nation's top managers were at Wembley, Bill Nic watched it on television - at Wilf Park's house in Fir Tree, Crook.

* And finally, back to the bar, whence Tim Grimshaw sends a photograph of the new sign at the Sir Colin Campbell pub in North Shields, pictured below. (Sir Colin, as everyone knows, was a 19th Century British general. Rather fewer, that is to say no one whatsoever, can fathom his connection with North Shields.)

Tim, at any rate, is convinced that it's not Colin Campbell at all but Desmond Lynam, a veteran of countless other campaigns. "The uniform is obviously part of his package to present the Champions' League final on ITV," adds Ti m. He's probably been watching too much television.

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